Wacky Roommates
by wolfchic011
Summary: "...and come home to a wacky roommate..." Scenes that must have been missing from episodes starring Peridot and/or Lapis. Begins after "Too Short to Ride" and follows canon.
1. Too Cool to Play

Chapter 1: Too Cool to Play

 _post - Too Short to Ride_

* * *

Lapis closed her eyes, sighing contentedly into her solitude. This is what she had been imagining when Steven said she could stay here on Earth. Peace and quiet. Space and time to let all the bad thoughts and unsettling desires in her head drift out and settle…

"Lazuliiii!" Hey Lazuli!"

Lapis groaned.

"LAAAAAZZZUUUULLLIIIII!" The entire silo seemed to shake from the force of her roommate's yell. Something heavy-sounding crashed to the ground. "Whoops!"

Lapis peered over the edge of the silo, eyes narrowed at her "roommate" as Steven (and increasingly, said Gem herself) had been referring to Peridot. To her dismay, Peridot was alone and she was beckoning her over to the barn.

Lapis spread her wings, already resigned to a conversation. Ignoring Peridot only made the smaller Gem try harder.

Peridot beamed as the blue Gem swooped down to the ground beside her. "Hi Lazuli!" She said cheerfully.

Lapis folded her wings away and crossed her arms. "You can call me Lapis you know…" She muttered but her roommate was practically bouncing with excitement.

"Lazuli! Look, Look!"

The tiny Gem was clutching some kind of humanoid toy to her chest that was nearly the size of her. A human electronic device floated at her elbow.

Peridot grinned at her. "Noticing anything…different?"

"Ummm…" Lapis looked her up and down several times, the toy catching her attention. "…Steven gave us another roommate?" She guessed.

Peridot hugged the thing tightly. "Well, yes. But there's something else!"

She carefully placed her friend on the ground, then turned back to Lapis with her eyes shining.

"Look! Watch!" She focused intently on a pile of metal cans in a heap alongside the barn, throwing both of her hands towards them. Nothing happened.

Peridot's smile slipped slightly. "Wait…hold on…I can control metal!" She shifted her stance and tried again. Not a single can moved.

Lapis raised an eyebrow.

Peridot chuckled self-consciously. "Well…" She pointed at the rectangle floating at her elbow. "I can do this pretty easily." She threw a glance over her shoulder. "And I moved that before you got down here…"

Lapis noticed that the old "car" — as Steven called it — was now over on its side, as if someone had deliberately tipped it over.

"So waddaya think? Isn't it…snazzy? 'Ay, Lazuli?" She grinned hugely, much like she had when she'd been trying to convince Lapis she really had changed. Lapis had to admit, when she first met "Peridot Facet 2F5L Cut 5XG", she'd never imagined her speaking like this.

Lapis just shrugged. "All Peridots can do that."

Her roommate's face crumpled instantly. "They can?"

Lapis nodded. "Yeah." She said drily but with little bite.

Peridot caught the rectangle from the air, holding it uneasily in her hand. "But…but I never saw one do it on Homeworld…" Her shoulders were scrunching up.

Lapis sighed, unhappy thoughts assaulting her. "Homeworld changed a lot. They probably just didn't tell you that you were capable of this." Her gaze darkened. "Homeworld lied about a lot of things."

Peridot scratched the back of her head, remembering the records that had falsely reported the absence of Gems on Earth. "Yeah…" She agreed. "They did."

Silence descended for a moment, Peridot looking like she wanted to go crawl off on her own. Even though Lapis valued those moments when Peridot chose not to pester her, she didn't feel like she should leave their conversation at that. "…I've never heard of an Era 2 Peridot discovering that ability though." She offered.

Apparently that had been the right thing to say. Peridot's grin returned with a vengeance. "neheehe. Yeah, I almost didn't. But then Amethyst gave me this talk about focusing on what I could do…" Peridot blushed deeply, "…and tried to destroy my only piece of tech and it just kinda…burst out of me."

Lapis paused, an unexpected sense of camaraderie with Peridot stealing past her careful block on her emotions. In spite of herself, she couldn't help a small warm feeling starting in her chest. She said nothing, letting Peridot continue.

The green Gem was flexing her fingers carefully. "It's kind of like…an enormous, complicated array of strings connecting me to the metal…and how I move…" A pipe shifted and rolled off the rack alongside the barn with a clang. Peridot jumped in surprise. "…the metal responds…"

"Controlling water is similar."

"Huh?"

Lapis held out her hand. "It's all in your head. But you're trying to force it out anyway you can." She held her hand out to the pool. Immediately, a large column of water rose up, straight and flawless. "You just have to get out of your head and feel it."

"Okay…" Peridot raised her hands toward the pipes. "FEEEEELLLL it." She closed her eyes and grunted. The pipes didn't move. But the car lifted effortlessly into the air.

"Nice." Lapis said, nodding at the hovering vehicle.

Peridot cracked open her eyes, seeming surprised that the car was float.

"Uhh yes! I meant to do that…" She took a step back and the car rose up even higher. "Now…let's see if I can…GAHH!"

Something had found its way under her foot, something small and round and unstable, sending the less-than-graceful Peridot tumbling to the ground.

Above their heads, the car responded accordingly. But instead of crashing down on top of them, it flung itself forward…right into the attic of the barn.

Peridot and Lapis stared at it with wide eyes, expecting that it would fall or the entire barn would crumble to bits from such an assault. But the truck seemed to have wedged itself into the structure quite comfortably and sat at a slight angle, trunk bed sticking out.

They exchanged looks.

Lapis put a hand over her mouth but she couldn't contain the snort. Her mirth spilled over, morphing into full-fledged belly-shaking laughter that had her doubling over.

Peridot was blushing a deep blue but she slowly loosened up, her own breathy laughter hesitantly joining Lapis'.

"I like it." Lapis declared. "Let's keep it."


	2. No Longer Alone

Chapter 2: No Longer Alone

 _post - Alone at Sea_

* * *

Peridot twisted her foot, the metal gear clanking and turning in response.

"Ah ha! Gotcha!" Her tongue poking out between her lips, she turned her foot in a circle slowly. The gears responded, a complex series of ropes slowly tightening and lifting the prone form of the Earth silo into an upright position. "Carefully…just a little further…"

The familiar sound of water and wind rushing by alerted her to the presence of her roommate. Locking the gear in place, she rushed out of the barn.

At first she couldn't see her but then she heard a sigh from above her. Lapis Lazuli had just touched down on the roof of the barn, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. "Lapis!" Peridot called, waving. "You're back! I rigged up a simplistic leverage device so we can raise the silo into the hole without a repeat of the truck! If you could just…"

She paused, noticing the dark shadow cast over her roommate's eyes. Peridot frowned. After being on Earth for nearly a year, she had gotten very good at picking up on emotions. Lapis was one of the hardest Gems she'd ever tried to understand on this planet (apart from Garnet who still eluded her…) but Peridot liked to think she was getting better at the subtle shifts in the blue Gem's eyes and shoulders that often indicated her changing mood. The dark clouds in the sky overhead that hadn't been there a second ago was also a big tip off.

Peridot circled around to the back of the barn, where she'd set up a ladder to allow for better roof access. This wasn't the first time she'd had to chase the blue Gem down. Darn Lapis Lazulis and their need to be up high…Crawling carefully across the steep roof, she slid down a safe distance from her roommate, mirroring her position. "You okay?" Peridot asked quietly.

"Yeah."Lapis spoke into her knees, keeping her head down.

"How was hanging out with Steven?" Peridot asked, wondering how talkative she could encourage Lazuli to be tonight. Lapis was usually fine after spending time with Steven. Steven was the only one who could get her to smile most days. Not that Peridot hadn't been trying since the truck incident.

Lapis shifted slightly. "Fine." She mumbled.

"Where did he take you?"

"On a boat."

Peridot frowned in thought. "A boat? Oh! Right, a buoyant water-vessel. Why would he do that?"

Lapis pressed her eyes into her knees, her whole body tightening. "He wanted me to be comfortable with the ocean again."

"Oh. So did you…?"

Lapis raised her head. " _She_ was there…"

"Who was…oh." Peridot mentally kicked herself for not realizing it sooner. Jasper was still a sensitive subject around the barn, so much so that Peridot had forsaken even uttering the name of the orange Gem in casual conversation. The last time she'd done that, Lapis had blasted the silo out of the ground with little warning. Thankfully, her ingenious engineering skills had figured out a simple way to attach it to the barn and that problem was solved.

But apparently the wound was still too fresh. Peridot couldn't imagine seeing Jasper again had done any good for Lapis.

She stretched out an uncertain hand to pat Lapis on the back. "You…wanna talk about it?"

Lapis turned to her, surprised. "Huh?"

Peridot shrugged. "Steven does it all the time. I…I know I'm not exactly Steven but I've gotten a lot better at listening…" Her hand hovered uncertainly over Lapis' back.

Lapis chuckled but there was no pleasure in it. "Peridot I…I don't know if I'll ever be ready to talk about it. Not even to Steven." She curled in on herself even further. " _Especially_ not to Steven…he shouldn't have to know what that was like…Being fused liked that for so long was…incredible. And terrible. It's going to haunt me for the rest of my life…" She looked up, gazing out over the countryside that was slowly being painted the bright colors of fall. "I just wish…I wish I had some way to get it out without… _talking_ about it. You know?"

The wind had picked up slightly and several drops of rain had started to fall. Peridot gazed out across the fields, thinking about a time when she had been struggling to express herself…and a small Earth device had helped.

"Lapis…can I…show you something?"

The blue Gem looked up. "Oookkay?"

Peridot smiled and stood. "It's in the barn…" She offered Lapis her hand.

To her surprise, Lapis took her under the arms without hesitation and gently flew them down.

"WHOA! errrr. Thanks." Peridot stuttered, head still spinning a bit from the act of flying. She led the way into the barn, poking around until she found the box she had been looking for. With a wave of her finger, she extracted a small Earth noise-maker (a _harmonica_ Steven had called this) and let it hover near her mouth.

"What is this?" Lapis asked, completely lost.

"It's a kind of Earth noise-maker. Humans use it to make…music. Steven showed it to me back when we were working on the drill." She took the harmonica from the air.

Lapis seemed interested. "How does it work?"

"It's a fairly simple scale utilizing harmonic sounds to create something pleasurable sounding. Steven told me to write a song about whatever I was thinking and it helped me connect with the others."

Lapis was silent but she watched Peridot with interest.

Peridot raised the instrument to her lips and took a deep breath. She blew hard, producing a sour-sounding blast of noise.

Lapis covered her ears, wincing as Peridot tried to coax anything musical out of the harmonica. "I don't think 'music' is going to work for me…" She said as Peridot finally ran out of breath.

But Peridot wasn't going to give up. "Maybe we could try something else? Music…gah!" She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "Music without sounds!" She let the harmonic clatter to the ground and dove into the mess of boxes next to her silo-lifting rigging.

"A ha!" She extracted several sheets of the primitive data-recording material and the colored wax pens from a deeply-buried box. "Steven showed me this once! When we made you that card!"

Pinching the pen awkwardly between her touch-stumps, she moved it across the sheet. A line of green appeared. Grinning, she held it up for Lapis' inspection.

"Music…with things!" She declared.

Her roommated raised an eyebrow but her arms had come uncrossed slightly. "What do we call that?"

Peridot turned her sheet around to stare at the green blob she had etched on the paper. "Steven had a name for it…uh…" She grinned sheepishly. "I cant remember what it was…"

Lapis shrugged. "…meep morp?" She offered.

Peridot raised an eyebrow. "Yeah…sure." It wasn't what Steven had called it. But then again, this wasn't what Steven had shown her. This was _theirs_. "Why don't you try?"

She offered Lapis her choice of the colored wax pens, taking her green-marked data-recorder and marker aside. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she moved the pen around some more, trying to make an accurate rendering of herself. It was harder than Steven had made it look.

Sometime later, Peridot glanced over at Lapis. The blue gem was concentrating fiercely as she tried manipulating the "cray-on" across the fibrous data-recorder. But her tongue was poking out of the corner of her mouth and there was just a hint of light in her eyes.

Lapis glanced up, catching sight of Peridot peering at her work. They were both silent for a moment, an unspoken challenge hanging in the air. "What do you think?" The blue Gem finally asked, holding the sheet up for Peridot's inspection.

Peridot considered the mess of dark lines and incoherent colors on the data-recorder. It didn't look like anything functional. It was merely feelings splayed across a medium, captured by Lapis' motions. It was dark and foreboding and somewhat unpleasant to look at. Her chest glowed at the thought that Lapis was trusting her with this. Only her.

She offered Lapis her best gentle smile. "I think it's great meep morp."


End file.
